Pros: *Fun story of friendship *Whimsical illustrations
Cons: Young children may not understand it
The Bottom Line: Your Personal Penguin is another Sandra Boynton book that I enjoy reading to my daycare children because of the fun illustrations and clever story.
kamel622's Full Review: Sandra Boynton - Your Personal Penguin
Your Personal Penguin
When I’m at the library with 4 year old Sonny and 2 year old Cindy and they are playing with the brio table and lego’s that are there, I am watching them while standing next to the shelves that house board books. I always scan this shelf to see if there is possibly a Sandra Boynton book that we haven’t read yet.
Recently I spotted Your Personal Penguin a 5” x 6” 20 page board book that was published by Workman Publishing in 2006. Included with this book is a url to a website where you can even download the Davy Jones (of Monkees fame) song that goes along with this book. The song can be downloaded at www.workman.com/boynton.
Ms. Boynton uses a hippo in a lot of her books, this one included. On the first page we see a small black and white penguin and just a rounded circle with a half moon on it at the top corner of the page. You can’t tell exactly what it is until turning the page and you can then see that it is a hippo and the portion we could see was its snout. On this page the penguin proclaims:
I want to be your
Personal Penguin
I want to walk right by your side.
He follows the hippo to an Italian restaurant and plays the violin for him, he rides in a hot air balloon with the hippo and even helps in canoe. The penguin is one determined fellow as he sits in the hippos lap and they read together and snuggle up.
On the final page we see the small penguin hugging the hippo and just the word Please? is written. The book doesn’t tell you if the hippo becomes friends with the penguin or not, but Sonny and I have decided that he did because of the loving look on the hippos face while being hugged.
Once again the clever drawings of Ms. Boynton illustrate this book with a cartoon style. Most pages are white, but a few have a colored background where the simple yet whimsical drawings are set. I especially love the page where the two are in a red canoe and the very large hippo is wearing a green bathing suit but not only that it looks as if he/she is wearing a bathing cap with a long strap that goes down under the chin. One interesting page is the one where the two are in a hot air balloon. It has a cloudy / mountain background that almost looks as if it is a photograph. I don’t think it is a photo but the style makes it look as if it could be.
The text is a large black easy to read font but also where the penguin is saying that he wants to be the hippo’s personal penguin there are stars at the edges of the two words and the p’s, o, and g are colored in.
We’ve had fun with this book and enjoyed the building friendship between the hippo and the penguin. Sonny loves to say the last word, Please? with me as I say it. He is happy that he feels these two have become great friends. He has been requesting this book since we checked it out and while at first I don’t think he quite understood what the penguin was trying to do, to become a friend, when I said it seemed as if the penguin wanted to be friends with the hippo his eyes lit up and he said “Yes!” (gosh he is cute)
This is a quick book to read that can be enjoyed by children from around 2 years and up to about 7 years although I must admit that I enjoy it very much too!
I highly recommend this Sandra Boynton book as well as many others we’ve read, including:
The irrepressible, ever-original Sandra Boynton introduces a brand-new Boynton board book plus free downloadable song sung by Davy Jones of The Monkee...More at Alibris
The irrepressible, ever-original Boynton introduces a brand new Boynton board book plus free song available for download. The book tells the story of ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.